Join the Conversation

Local sports teams again waiting on the weather

frajkowski@stcloudtimes.com
Published 6:33 p.m. CT March 29, 2014

Buy Photo

Despite the wishes of just about anyone in Minnesota, winter has refused to die. Area ballparks like Dick Putz Field are, as of March 25, still under a blanket of snow.(Photo: Kimm Anderson, kanderson@stcloudtimes.com)Buy Photo

No, his team is still not playing games outside, and probably won’t be for at least another week or more.

But Eden Valley-Watkins softball coach Dave Dziengel said Mother Nature still has a long way to go if she wants to top the havoc she wreaked on the local spring sports schedule last season.

“All we have to do is beat April 29,” said Dziengel, whose team finished third at the Class A state tournament a year ago.

“That was the first day we got outside last year. Next week is probably shot as far as games go. But we have games scheduled for April 7 and 10. I think maybe we have a shot at the 10th if we can start keeping the temperatures warmer — especially at night.”

Like most others in the area, Dziengel said his team’s home field is largely under snow.

“We haven’t plowed it or anything, so there’s still a lot of snow out there,” Dziengel said. “At least we’re starting to be able to see the grass.

“But even where the snow has melted, there’s still a lot of water on the ground. That’s probably because the frost is still in there.”

The continuing frost will make it hard to get on fields, even after the snow recedes. And as the number of frozen water pipes in the area has shown, the frost line goes fairly deep into the ground.

“We really need to get temperatures up above freezing for an extended period of time,” Sartell activities director John Ross said. “We need to get to the point where things aren’t freezing back up at night.”

Ross said area activities directors became adroit at juggling schedules after going through the snowy April the area experienced last year.

“Every year is a little different and you just have to roll with things the best you can,” Ross said. “I think last year we learned that sometimes you just have to accept losing a few games. It just gets too tough if you try to shoehorn six weeks worth of play into three or four at the end of the year.”

Ron Seibring, the director of sport facilities and campus recreation at St. Cloud State, said the dome at Husky Stadium will remain up until April 10. A number of teams have taken advantage of that to schedule practices and scrimmages. But Seibring said barring a blizzard, the dome will have to come down on schedule.

“We have the Earth Day Half Marathon that comes up the third weekend in April and it’s really important for that event to end up in Husky Stadium,” Seibring said. “So we do have to take the dome down. Which doesn’t mean we still won’t have opportunities for local teams to get on the turf.

“They will still be able to use the field. It will just be a lot chillier.”

The baseball field at St. John’s also is an artificial turf surface. But the snow and ice is not completely off that field yet. And Cory Bemis, the school’s athletic facilities coordinator, said construction of a grandstand at the facility — including wings stretching to the first and third base dugouts that are scheduled to be started after the Johnnies’ season concludes — already made scheduling high school events there this year almost impossible.

“We’ve told teams that it’s really going to be off limits this year,” Bemis said. “Aside from our varsity and JV schedules, we’re essentially going to be in construction mode. But we hope to be able to schedule more and more teams there in future years.”

So, in the end, a lot of teams are doing what Dziengel’s is — practicing indoors and waiting the weather out.

“It’s not fun being indoors, but it is what it is,” Dziengel said. “We scheduled a lot of our nonconference games early in the year for just this reason. If we don’t play them, it’s tough. But at least it doesn’t affect our conference season. Those are the games we really have to get in.”